Confusion
by Igiveup
Summary: I can't tell reality from fantasy anymore, Sam. Another Alex talking to Sam story, set just after the finale. Spoilers ahead, be advised.


**_2010. I have to wait until 2010 to find out what happends next?! I'll go insane before then! I guess I should be grateful that there will be a third year at all, but still. Obviously the characters are not mine. These are just my thoughts after viewing the finale._**

* * *

I have no idea what the hell is going on anymore. I've just been shot, Sam. For a second time, and by none other than Gene Hunt himself. He didn't mean to, I know that much, at least...

I told him about me Sam. Where I really came from. I had to. Summers gave him my tapes, my private journal. The things I said on that tape... He asked me for the God's honest truth. That if he meant anything to me at all... I should tell him. He had been betrayed so many times, that he wasn't sure who to trust anymore. Just like I was, at first. He wanted to know that he could still trust me. So... I told him.

He didn't believe me. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. As much as Annie loved you, she didn't believe you when you made the same claims. But still, this is the second time in nine years that he's met someone who keeps whining about wanting to go home and claiming they don't belong there. You'd think he make some kind of connection! I mentioned you, made a comparison. Maybe he thought I was mocking your memory or something. The betrayal in his eyes, Sam. I told him the truth, but he thought I was making up an outrageous story for my own personal reasons.

I suppose he did make one connection: He wondered why it was he seemed to "attract the liars and the weirdos," as he put it. Me being in the former category, you in the latter. Or maybe he was thinking about Frank Morgan, I don't know. Believing we were both mad probably is an easier coincidence to believe than time travel via coma. It's what makes it harder to believe he's not real. That scepticism. Reacting the way any normal person would when told such things...

But I'm getting off track. I wanted to tell you about what's happening to me now.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I was shot for a second time. And it appears that I've woken up back home in 2008.

Notice that I said, 'appears'. The fact of the matter is that I just don't know for sure. I thought I did. But ever since I first woke up in 1981 it has been made abundantly clear that I know nothing about what has happened to me, or you.

Did they call out to you too Sam? You never said anything in your reports. Rather vital information to leave out, don't you think? Your method of getting home was different: the 1973 version of yourself wasn't injured, so maybe it was just good old fashioned guilt that prompted your building jump.

Or maybe you did receive messages, and you just kept quiet about it. Can't really say I blame you for it. They probably wouldn't have let you return to work if you did. Or if they had, it would have been strictly desk work, combined with psychotropic medication. Whatever the state of your mind was at that time, you still knew that nobody could be expected to take your claims seriously. If I wasn't living this experience myself, I wouldn't believe it either.

They're talking to me, Sam. The same way you and I got messages while in our comas. I turn on the tv, and there's Gene Hunt's face, telling me I have to go back to prove that he didn't mean to shot me! When I look at Molly's blackberry, I get a text message saying I have to be there for Chris and Shaz's wedding.

I don't know what to do. This 2008 feels every bit as real as the one I had left behind---and as real as 1982.

I can no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy, Sam. That scares me far more than anything else I've experienced.

If this isn't really 2008, then maybe I need to go back to 1982 in order to return to the _real _2008. My 2008 where there aren't weird messages coming at me from another time! Where I'm back with _my _Molly.

On the other hand, maybe this _is _the real 2008. If that's the case, I'll have to ignore the messages Gene and the rest of the team are sending me. For Molly's sake, I'd have to. Even if it means Gene goes to jail for my murder.

I can't afford to make the wrong choice Sam. If this is somehow a coma-within-a coma, then I haven't really won. But if I try to go back to 1982, I might leave myself stranded there forever. Or even worse, just flat out die and leave Molly without a mother, and Gene having killed someone he loved.

Or maybe I had been right the first time and the eighties were nothing more than a very long dream brought on by your demented ramblings, these messages just leftover hallucinations, and you were nothing more than a very sick man who should have gotten help instead of forcing your mum to bury her son!

... Sam? I... I'm sorry. It's just... I feel so confused and helpless. I wish I could really talk to you, instead of just staring at your photograph. Did you know that Gene kept a news clipping of you pinned to the wall of his office? I would stare at it sometimes, usually when his back was turned. Now that I'm "back" in 2008, I'm staring at your file. The picture has "SUICIDE" stamped on it, same as the one from my 2008.

I don't know why I think you'd have any real answers for me. You're the only one who's been through this that I actually feel I could trust. But just because you've been through it doesn't mean you understand how it works anymore than I do. And yet I keep staring into your eyes, trying to find a solution.

Would it be a good thing or not if you did answer me? The one constant in both(all three?) worlds is that you're dead. The cause might be different, but either way you are no longer among the living. The notion of losing one of the few certainties I have left is frighting.

What should I do, Sam? _God please tell me what I should do!_


End file.
